Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He champions the underdog and strives to negotiate modern life’s absurdities via melodic rhythms of obscure power pop. He has three collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), and Rocky Landscape With Vagrants (Cyberwit); two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize. Another collection, A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing), is forthcoming.

The pandemic gods awaken

from their hundred-year’s slumber and sigh.

While their inclination once was laughter,

they now harden according to what times demand.

They search for a silver thread of truth,

of music teased from mass cacophony,

the notes a sweet chorus of souls rising

from crowded ICUs to roomy heavens.

Hearts shaken with devastation

beat a rhythm of late acknowledgment

as migration from fear to recognition

spreads virally, traced by salt tears

that season an otherwise bland

palate of bloated overgrown time.

The pantheon delivers random storms,

rumbles of thunder presaging panic

of lost wonder, of world at risk,

society floating off from innocence.

The pandemic gods dissipate

like clouds creeping in midnight sky,

then blow across the firmament

to reform as a breath of hope

for those inhaling to survive:

a new song will arrive.